Hi all, just finished my first playthrough of IA5. I've never tried any of the previous versions; this was the first and only mod I tried. I did my research before choosing this one because I wanted to be fairly certain it wasn't a waste of time.

Needless to say, I wasn't disappointed. It was pretty difficult but I got through with many reloads, ranging from full wipes, failed pickpocketing (I pickpocketed every single npc in the game because Sikret basically created a whole new world to explore), failed spell learning, party member dying etc.

I have no suggestions for gameplay or balance issues because I trust Sikret will do a good job. Most importantly I don't want to know what's coming pre-emptively. So whatever Sikret decides to do, I'll play the next one as if it were a new game, new rules, whatever. That's the whole point of these mods, getting a challenging, and brand new game to play...for free. Big ups to the mod's creator.

I do request one thing though. On the harder battles, I pause over 9000 times each fight for tactical purposes. The thing I gently caressing hate is the aura thing. Can you put in a mod that makes the caster say 'Aura Cleansed' when the new round comes up? So we know when hes ready to cast another spell, use another potion, etc? That way we aren't sitting there in real time, for example spamming stoneskin, noticing aura not cleansed, re-attack to wait out aura to avoid doing absolutely nothing... then 1/1000th of a round and 45 pause+unpause later, do the same thing for the 46th time. And the round is STILL not over. Sorry, maybe nobody else is bothered by this. High APM FTL.

Hi crunk,


Yep, completely agree with you.



I can sympathise but I'm not sure this is really possible to do. Have you tried using the auto-pause: end of round option? It's not perfect for several reasons (e.g. it pauses for hasted characters twice every round) but it might help.

It is hard in the complicated battles to make sure people are not wasting valuable seconds waiting for their auras to clear. I try to pause the game roughly once a round to decide what everyone is going to do and where possible give all the orders at the same time so I don't forget someone. After a couple of rounds invariably things get out of sync though and then it's a case of having to just concentrate very hard.

I can add the "Aura Cleansed" display string effect with the right delay value to any given item or spell separately. I'm not sure if it's a good idea though. For now, and for testing its usefulness, I can do it for a couple of items such potions of superior healing, just to see how it works. What do you say, Raven?

I suppose there's no harm in trying it. To be honest (this is just my own opinion) I quite like how it is at the moment with no help for timing.

Yes, after thinking a bit more about it, I think that it's best to drop the idea. The reason is that if we implement it for a selected number of items and spells and leave the others, an incinsistency will be created in the game and the player won't be sure whether he should wait for the "Aura Cleansed" message in any given round or not. He may simply wait for a long time without seeing the message just because the item or spell he had used as his previous action was among those the display string effect was not added to.

Is there a reason to do it for some rather than all? (It looks as if you could automate it, for spells at least).

For now and offhand, I can think of a few reasons; there may be more.

1- For spells which can be put in contingencies and triggers, it can't be implemented without unwelcome side effects. The spell will be fired in an instance, but the delayed "display String" effect will show the message at the wrong moment. For example if a spell has a casting time of 4, the delayed effect should be added to the spell with a delay value of 2, but when the spells fires through contingency, the message "Aura Cleansed" will be displayed after 2 seconds.

2- If a mage wears Robe of Vecna or has casting time bonus by any means, the message will be displayed at the wrong time. He has finished casting early, but his aura won't be cleansed at the time the message is displayed.

3- For dragons (and other special creatures whose aura is always cleansed) the message will be shown improperly and irrelevantly.

4- While the Improved Alacrity spell is active, we will have a mixed mess of "Aura Cleansed" messages shown on the screen; those from Improved Alacrity as well as those added to the spell files.

Yeah for spells with non-zero casting time this idea wouldn't work at all. Also I was forgetting it would show for enemies as well, and the extra lines of text in the dialogue box is just adding clutter (it can take long enough to scroll through the box looking for something as it is).

Although I could be wrong, I think if you add the DisplayString opcode in a global effect on the spell rather than in each ability block, it'll come in at the point at which the caster starts casting, which I think solves these problems at least.

You are right. I had forgotten this possibility when I was writing my previous post. Thanks for the reminder. It can completely solve the second issue and can soften the first one to some extent (as it's still inconvenient to see for example 3 "Aura cleansed" messages 6 seconds after firing a spell trigger containing three spells; not to mention seeing several such messages for enemies who prebuff).

And since there are also other reasons against adding those strings to spells, I think that it's not an appealing idea and can be dropped.

Yeah, I've tried using auto-pause Raven. It is completely lame because it doesnt pause when your aura cleanses; it pauses the moment you finish casting. Apparently that signifies end of a round in-game. So, it is actually even worse.

How about if you add a pseudo debuff on casters that signifies they are temporarily exhausted from casting a spell? Obviously having alacrity on or using an uber long cast-time spell would not put this debuff on. But casting say, magic missiles would put a 5 second debuff up.

I guess, to be perfectly honest, I was exaggerating on how annoying it actually was, because obviously, I played through the whole thing without quitting. Maybe I'm just spoiled from always having custom user interfaces, macros, and scripts to enhance my gaming. I forget that the main opponent here is a script which is only a reflection of an individual's creative mind, and not a live competitor. Oh well... if it's unviable to implement a 'cooldown timer' then gently caress it. No big deal. Won't stop be from playing IA6.